The History, Evolution, and Controversies of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman’s career began at Stanford University. It was there where Hoffman recognized the importance of leveraging relationships and social networks, an idea that would form the basis of his future start-up, LinkedIn. He found his first job at Apple through such networking. Hoffman had an incredible opportunity and could not pass it up. Upon leaving Apple in August 1997, Reid Hoffman founded his own company, Socialnet. The platform served as a means of connecting all of those who were active online. Hoffman saw an incredible demand for interconnectedness and believed Socialnet could serve as the middleman between individuals. At first, Socialnet was centered on dating, finding golf partners, and roommates. It was a basic mode of putting two individuals in contact when they otherwise would not have been able to connect. Nevertheless, Hoffman realized that his “product distribution strategy” was misdirected, …show more content…
His mission statement and central philosophy was to “build a network of individual professionals doing business within their network.” Hoffman wanted to mimic the business world, in which professionals introduce acquaintances to other professionals. His main focus and first problem was getting people on the platform. As stated above, LinkedIn hinges on professionals searching for other like-minded individuals and creating networks. Without users, Hoffman was unable to show potential investors LinkedIn’s main functions. Nevertheless, despite only receiving approximately 20 signups a day in early 2003, Hoffman received an investment from Sequoia Capital in Fall 2003, kick starting the business. In 2005, Hoffman announced the company’s first revenue stream, job listings and subscriptions. A year later, in 2006, Hoffman and his team added two main features, “People You May Know” and